Harried employees of various banks were in for a surprise when they arrived for work on Friday morning. At the branches, they were greeted by some old hands, as several retired bank employees, including some former branch managers, went to their former branches and volunteered to do any work assigned.

While bank managers are being cautious about allotting work since they would be held responsible for “any incident”, they are assigning tasks such as checking identify proofs of customers, counting old notes and bundling them, and maintaining informal accounts of cash inflow and outflow, which would be later keyed into computers by regular employees.

Hundreds of employees of State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH), Andhra Bank, State Bank of India (SBI), and other nationalised banks have started going to their former workplaces and offering help, as bank employees remain overworked.

“They (employees) are under a lot of stress because banks have not handled this kind of rush in recent times. It is our duty to help them,” M Chakrapani, president of SBH Retired Employees Association, said. “We have approached branches where we retired from, or had worked earlier, or have gone to the nearest branch and offered our services.”

Although only regular existing employees with authorisation and access can do most of the bank work, “we can make their work a little easier”, Chakrapani said.

Nearly 1,000 former SBH staffers have approached the bank. Most of them are already unofficially helping out at some branches, helping in crowd control, counting cash, and so forth.

“To make it official, we have also submitted a letter to SBH MD (managing director) Shantanu Mukherjee that we will volunteer wherever required,’’ Chakrapani said.